The Secret Chord (13 page)

“But I, who had been less loved, was less able to be forgiving. And of course he brought news of another betrayal. A more intimate one. I'm speaking of the marriage to Ahinoam. I'd been broken enough, but this news flayed me. Yonatan tried to explain it away, to give me a way to bear it. David cared nothing for this girl, he claimed. She was little more than a pretty simpleton, a healthy peasant girl who would go uncomplaining with him into the wilderness, tolerate hardship and make no demands upon him. It was simply necessary for him to get an heir. It was any man's duty to do this; much more so a man destined to be king. Furthermore, he could not wait until he was reunited with me, for no one could say when that might be. He had to get an heir while he was young enough to protect and raise the child. David's life was full of perils; I must not blame him for wanting to make a son. My own future son would of course take precedence over any child of this nobody Ahinoam, should she be brought to bed of a boy. Indeed, Yonatan assured me, David longed for me, for our reunion, for the chance for us to have our own son. So he spoke, and so I tried
to believe, as I lay in my cold bed, while Palti knocked fruitlessly upon the door and I sent him, unsatisfied, away.

“And then, as you know well, David married Avigail of Carmel, the widow of Navaal. Palti made sure I heard of it. When finally I got a chance to confront Yonatan, he confessed the truth of it, and was honest enough to confirm what Palti had told me, that this time it was a match of affection and mutual regard. I think my brother saw, by then, that I was wasting away in Palti's house, pining for a future that might never be, estranging myself from the one man who could give me happiness in the present. So, in stages, my faith wavered. I began to believe that David had not loved me at all. I began to look at Palti for the man he was: a good man, kind and just. And as I looked at him, I would see him looking at me hungrily, as if he really desired me. Me. I had not been desired in that way before. In the end, I gave way to it, and I fell in love with him. And then you all fled to Ziklag, to the enemy king, or so we thought. Yonatan could no longer bring me any news or word from David. I began to will myself to forget him. There were days, weeks, when I did not think of him at all. And when my children came, finally he became just a bitter memory, without, as I thought—wrongly, of course—any power to wound me at all. Then when the news came from Har HaGilboa—”

She stopped. I glanced up from my writing. Her eyes brimmed and her chin quivered. I looked at her, and what I saw was David's face, grief-blasted, the day that same news came to us, in our Ziklag exile, that the battle on the mountain of Gilboa had been lost. That Shaul and Yonatan were among the many dead.

“No more,” I said, putting down my reed. “No need.”

She gave a ragged sigh. The tears were spilling down her face now. She reached out a hand and laid it on my arm. “Thank you. You . . . you are kind. I'm not used to it.”

I blew on the parchments to dry the ink, then I rose. I bowed to her and turned, reaching for the door latch.

“Natan—will you tell the king I did as he commanded?”

“I will,” I said. “I will tell him you fulfilled his request in full measure.” As I stepped through the door, she spoke again.

“Natan?”

“Yes?”

“Will you—” Her voice broke. She took a breath, composing herself. “Will you remember me to him?”

I left her in that dismal little cell, and crept away. I had gone there expecting a difficult interrogation with a woman animated by hatred. I had prepared myself to deal with a refractory silence or to withstand an outpouring of bile. I had not expected to be overwhelmed with pity.

All women's lives are like that, I told myself, as I climbed the stair that led to the better-appointed rooms of the king's house. Which of them ever is mistress of her own destiny? Highborn or peasant, it makes no difference. At least David hadn't had her flogged or killed, as another king might have done.

But now that I had heard the tale of her life in her own words, my heart ached for her. I didn't need to make her relive the events that led to the rift with David. I knew all about it. I was there.

I
sat in the buttery light of the late evening, lingering over my wine. Outside, finches and larks tousled the trees, singing their frantic hymn to the waning day. Craving solitude, I sent Muwat out, offering him an evening of liberty. He went reluctantly, his young face anxious. I imagine I looked rather ill, if my outer self gave a true reflection of my low spirits. I poured more wine, letting the light find fire in the liquid as it streamed from the jar into the cup. It was good wine, from the king's own store. My father would have valued the skill of the winemaker. I thought of our vineyards, the green vines scribbling across the steep russet hills that sprang up from the flat white shore. I could recall every crevice and cave, every rough tree trunk, every dusty leaf, the sudden pulses of fresh springwater through tumbles of stone. I felt a stab of longing for the apricot-colored earth of those vineyards, for my father, rubbing it in his coarse hands, tasting it, assessing as it crumbled, not too sticky nor too fine, but just the correct tilth to support the roots and sustain the vines. All that skill, lost with the plunge of metal. His blood, soaking into the soil. Even in death, nourishing that earth he had loved and tended. Had his death really been necessary, as David had asserted, and I, a child, had so readily accepted? I pushed the thought away. Doubt was like rot. Excise it at the first speckling, the first stain, the first faint stench of decay. But then—I suppose because my mind was on the wine—I thought of that other kind of rot, the soft gray fungus that sometimes afflicts the late grape harvest if the air turns unexpectedly moist. That rot causes the grapes to yield up a heavy, viscous juice of stupendously
rich flavor. The wine pressed from such grapes was the best of all. Maybe doubt was like that sometimes. Maybe it, too, could yield rich fruit. Perhaps, then, it was right to doubt. Perhaps I had a right to doubt.

But this line of thinking could bring me no ease. I did not want to collapse again, as I had that day, killing for Achish in the Amalekite village when thoughts of my father had overcome me. I had learned to live my life in the grip of an iron-fisted discipline. For a man like me, self-mastery was everything. I exercised that discipline, swilled the fine wine, and willed my thoughts elsewhere, to a part of the Land I had never seen.

Har HaGilboa, that spinelike ridge that looms over the Wadi Yezreel. They say it is lovely there at this time of year, the wild iris all abloom, the thorn breaks full of the music of migrating birds, the cold white tip of Har Hermon visible in the distant north. We never got that far, of course. We marched out of Ziklag and joined with the forces of Achish, the army of Gath. Our men were in mixed spirits. Some, who had been ill treated by Shaul, carried a yearning for vengeance and were spoiling for this fight—a clean fight of army against army instead of the mean skirmishing that others as well as I found dishonorable. But for some of our men, the idea of joining forces against our people was gut-wrenching. Their enmity was toward Shaul himself, not toward our people as a whole, and only their loyalty to David drove them forward.

So, we marched under Achish's banners all the way from Gath north up to Shunem, which was the staging area for the Plishtim armies. It was dark when we arrived, but even so, it was clear that the forces mustering comprised a mighty host. We made a hasty camp, and David called me into his tent. Yoav and Avishai were already there. David had drawn a map of the dispositions, as he had understood them, in the dust at his feet. “It's clear what Shaul means to do,” he said, tapping the point of his spear on the lines that represented the position of Shaul's forces across the wadi on Gilboa. “He means
to attack head-on. He thinks having the high ground gives him an advantage. But he's underestimated the Plishtim forces. The only chance, against these numbers, is to let them overrun the Wadi Yezreel. Let them think they've won. Then surround them by night and sweep in from the rear, here”—he prodded the dirt—“and the flanks, here”—he swept the spear point in a wide arc. “What's wrong with him? He must have sent out spies to assess the forces, and if so he must know a frontal assault is madness.”

“Well, you said it,” Yoav rumbled. “As if we needed more proof of madness.”

What I noticed was that David had used “them” to refer to the army of which we were purportedly members. It seemed a strange thing to me at the time. Between that, the hard ground and the normal wakefulness on the march to battle, I got little sleep that night.

I rose at first light, and made my way through the stirring camp. All the
serens
from the coastal cities had answered the call to arms, their diverse banners snapping in the stiff breeze. I walked up the rise to survey the totality of the encampment. I had never seen such an army.

By the time I returned to our tents, David was in conference with Achish and several other Plishtim leaders—
serens,
by their elaborate armor and the circlets on their helmets. Even from far off, I could see that the debate was heated. As I moved forward to hear better, one raised his voice and extended an accusing arm at David. “This man is our enemy. I will not go into battle with him, or with his men. They'll cut us down and betray us.”

Achish answered in a low, steady voice, and from where I stood, I could not make out his words. Whatever he said, it must have been unconvincing. One of the
serens
pulled off his helmet and threw it at Achish's feet, cursing in his own tongue. I saw Achish turn to David, laying his hands on both his shoulders. After a few moments, David bowed, turned to each of the
serens
and saluted them, then turned away, calling out for Yoav.

Even to this day, I have no sure idea how David would have acted had we been allowed to march on. I believe he had some stratagem, some intrigue, that would have kept us from shedding the blood of our own. Part of me believes that the Plishtim
serens
saw correctly; that David had marched out intending to betray Achish—to sweep in behind the Plishtim, closing a lethal circle and mowing them down until, at last, he came face-to-face with Shaul, having proved his loyalty by delivering him victory. It's the kind of grand moment he would have fashioned for himself in the long days of exile. The kind of bold move he, perhaps alone, could have imagined and then made real. But I think that vision faltered when he saw the disposition of Shaul's forces, and the magnitude of the army massed against them. In any case, there was no such moment. No battlefield reconciliation. No victory.

As I have already set down, we were not there to witness the rout. As our people fell and bled on that battlefield, we were back in Ziklag, the women still bearing the red marks of rope burn on their necks and wrists, the deeper scars of terror in their eyes.

We worked together, cleaning up the debris of the burned fort, David pitching in, hands blackened like the rest of us, the rift with his men healed over, if not forgotten. The work went swiftly, I think because we all craved the distraction of hard physical tasks while we waited for scraps of news from the front. A day after our return, a messenger brought news that battle had been joined. After that, nothing, for two days. Then on the third day, a ragged fellow, a foreigner, staggered up to the gates of Ziklag claiming to have important news, hoping for reward. David was in counsel with Yoav and some others of his close advisers. The room bore the scent of curing plaster laid in over the smoke-damaged walls. I was there, sitting quietly to the side as had become my way during those days of exile when the voice did not speak and my vision of our future was misted by doubt.

“Bring him!” David said, his face alight. “If he seeks a reward, the news must be good.” The man came in, giving off the ripe, familiar
stink of a battle-weary fighter—the unmistakable odor of days-old fear-sweat dried into the fibers of his tunic, which was torn and stained brown with blood. As soon as he identified which of us was David, he threw himself upon the floor in prostration.

“Where are you coming from?” David asked.

“I have just escaped from the camp of Israel,” he said, though his accent was foreign.

“Get up,” David commanded. “Someone, bring him a stool. Some water.”

The man sat, heavily, and drained the cup. When he was done, David asked him to account for himself. He glanced up, warily. He was, he said, an Amalekite mercenary. He flinched as he said it. Considering how things stood between the men of Yudah and the Amalekites—our sworn enemy—I thought him either very brave or very foolish to admit to it. And then he said he had been captured by Yonatan's men early in the fighting.

“Yonatan?” David stood up abruptly, his face greedy for news. “So they held you where? In Shaul's camp? What happened? Tell me!”

The exhausted fellow, unnerved by David's sudden urgency, stammered out an account of a battle gone hopelessly wrong, the Israelite forces outmanned and overrun, the massive casualties and finally the rout, as the survivors fled for their lives, leaving Shaul, Yonatan and his brothers holding the ridge with only a handful of loyal men standing ground beside them.

A certain drawing back of the shoulders. The slightest tilt of the head. I knew David well by then. I knew how to read his body. I saw him adjust his stance as if to receive a great blow. The mercenary took a ragged breath, and stated what I—and, I think, David—already knew to be true. Shaul was dead, and Yonatan beside him.

David's shoulders sagged, his belly contracted. A sigh, no more than that, escaped him. Then he took a step forward, bent down and lifted the Amalekite up by the tunic, his voice a flat, hard whisper. “How do you know this?”

The man glanced up into his face, and then quickly looked away, as if to avoid what he had seen there. His words came in a breathy rush.

“When the battle became a rout, our guards fled, and all the prisoners scattered. We were running for our lives, as you, lord, surely would understand. By chance I came over the ridge, and ran right into Shaul's own unit, and realized that he had made his stand there, on that very spot. You could see the signs that fighting had raged all around him. There were many dead. At his feet I saw one I knew—the body of his son Yonatan, gashed by many wounds.”

The muscles beneath David's eyes worked. His words were a rasp. “You are sure of it? You knew him, you say?”

“My lord, I did. His unit was the one that captured us, and we were paraded before him. And there he was, not ten spans distant from where I stood.”

David's voice was even lower now. He pulled the man closer. “You are sure he was dead? His wounds—they were mortal?”

“My lord, no man could have withstood them. He was laid open like a gutted buck.”

David's eyes closed. The muscles of his throat worked. His hand clenched even more tightly on the Amalekite's stained tunic. The man went on, his words tumbling forth.

“The king alone was alive, save for a youth—a boy, merely—I think it was his armor bearer.” David winced. He had been that boy, once. “The two of them, man and boy, were covered in blood. The king was leaning heavily upon his spear to keep himself upright. The enemy's archers had made a target of him. Their arrows had pierced his gut. You could see it cost him merely to stand. He was looking out to the plain, where the Plishtim merkavot were advancing. They were close; you could hear the grind of their wheels. And through the dust, you could make out the glint of their spears. They were almost to the foot of the ridge. In minutes they would dismount and swarm the mountain. I saw the king turn to the boy. His face—my lord—you could read the pain there. He knew well enough what the Plishtim
would do with him—to him—if they got to him while he yet drew a breath. He could barely speak, but he managed to mouth an instruction. “Draw sword,” he told the boy. “Run me through.” But the boy couldn't do it. He fell to his knees, weeping, shaking his head, crying out that he could not raise a hand to the king he loved. Shaul lunged for his own sword. He braced the hilt against a rock, and fell forward onto it. He didn't even cry out. As he lay there, the sword right through him, I thought he was dead. But then he rolled onto his side and raised his hand, as if gesturing to the boy. The boy didn't see it, in his grief. He was on his face, tearing at his hair and weeping. So I crept forward, to help him, if I could. As I bent over him, his eyes fluttered. He looked right at me. My lord, he could barely lift a finger, but he gestured me to come even closer. I knelt down there in the dirt beside him—this is his blood, you see it, here on my tunic. He tried to speak. Blood bubbled up through his lips. I had to put my ear to his mouth to make out what he said. He asked who I was. I told him I was his Amalekite prisoner. ‘Then finish me off. I'm in agony.' So I took the short dagger from his dead son's belt and cut his throat with it. He was barely alive when I did it. Then I took the circlet from his helmet and the amulet from his arm, and ran for my life. I have brought them here to you, my lord.”

He made to reach into a small cloth sack that he wore cinched about his shoulders. I saw a glint of gold before David swatted his hand away. There was a clatter as the circlet fell back upon the amulet inside the bag.

David dropped his right hand from the Amalekite's tunic as if he had just noticed how foul it was. He pushed him away so hard that the man staggered. David's eyes were voids. I had seen it before. I knew what it meant.

“How dare you?” He spoke slowly, his voice low. “How dare you lift your hand and kill the Name's anointed? No one may take it upon himself to kill a king.”

The Amalekite's voice became high and shrill. “My lord, I knew
he would never rise from where he was lying. He was as good as dead. . . . He, he begged me. The Plishtim would have done terrible . . . I was not . . .”

I saw David's hand clench at his waist, where his sword would have rested had he been wearing one. He turned to Yoav, who was armed. “Strike him down.” Yoav hesitated for only a second, his brow raised in interrogation. David answered with a curt nod. Yoav drew his sword and, with a step like a dancer's, ran at the man. With his right hand, he plunged the blade into the Amalekite's chest, and with his left he pounded the hilt, driving it home.